


Distopia

by Edmondia_Dantes



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: ALL OF THE DISNEY, F/M, Gen, look how many obscure things I can reference!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1256347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edmondia_Dantes/pseuds/Edmondia_Dantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of Mickey Mouse. An epic AR told in a not-so-epic way, in which absolutely no events from canon are changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which a Scene Is Set

There are no calendars in Timeless River. The sun rises, the sun sets, but no one tracks it, it simply is. The seasons do not turn, the weather does not change, and each day is like the last, a jumble of chaos and laughter, never-ending, never faltering, for what can be expected to endure in a world that lives only in the moment?

It is when Yen Sid comes for Oswald that everything changes.

It is Yen Sid who creates the first Day.

And it is Yen Sid who is responsible for all that comes after.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which There Is a World, A Rabbit, A Mouse, A Sorcerer, And The Beginnings of a Tale

They flock at his feet, awed by this stranger whose shape is so different from their own, whose eyes spark like the diamonds in the sky, who is so hard to see because of the vibrancy pouring off of him.

In time, they will learn what color is, and they will learn that they are not all the same, and they will learn the difference between Light and Darkness, but for now all they know are the endless shades of gray that will someday be called Twilight.

Their world is young, the sorcerer tells them, their world is newly-born and only now beginning to learn itself, and that is why they are still unfinished, still so soft in comparison to all of his hard, fierce edges. The diamonds in the sky are worlds like their own, both newly-born and older, living creatures with a Heart and a will, and they are their own world's children, still learning to be, naive but so full of potential, and he has come among them to make that potential blossom.

And the most promising of them all is Oswald, Yen Sid says, and Mickey watches as his brother's eyes gleam, as his brother cocks an ear and preens, and he hides a scowl behind laughter as he spills a barrel of molasses out across the grass, soaking his brother and the hem of the sorcerer's robes.

It is an accident, of course, and they maintain this polite fiction up until the sorcerer has retired for the night.

Then Oswald tackles Mickey into the sticky puddles that remain, squishes molasses down his shorts and into his ears, and they call it even.

* * *

In the wake of the sorcerer's arrival, they learn to give names to things, not just people. When the sun is in the sky, that is "day," and when it is not, that is "night." The in-between times are called "sunrise" and "sunset." One day comes after another, and that cycle never ends. A moment can be a long one, or a short one, and those have names as well, ones that Mickey never pays much attention to learning.

The World is their parent, and they are its children, but they are not all the same. Yen Sid says they are all slightly different, even though they all have bodies, two arms and two legs and two eyes and two ears but only one nose; he says that they are all unique, says that no two of them are the same.

It is one of the only times that Mickey sees Oswald disagree with Yen Sid, when he frowns and says that there are sibling pairs, children that their world birthed together, surely these are the same?

Yen Sid says they are not.

That night, when the lessons are over, Mickey sits with Oswald, palm-to-palm, and listens while his brother speaks quietly, counting off differences one by one.

There are so very many that neither of them can understand why they hadn't noticed it before, especially given that Oswald's tail, now that Mickey has thought about it, looks completely _ridiculous_.

* * *

His eyes are not his brother's. His nose is not his brother's, nor is his face, nor are his ears, nor is his tail. Their hands are not the same, their feet are not the same, their eyes are not the same, _they_ are not the same.

So what, then, makes them siblings?

Oswald reaches over and taps Mickey's chest, then taps his own, and Mickey lets his tail lash side to side, lazy, a reminder that they no longer breathe the same and maybe they never have. Oswald bops him on the ear, a little too hard, reminding him who is eldest, reminding him who came first, even though their memories of before are misty and formless.

Mickey reaches over and taps his hand against his brother's chest, and for a time, all is still--they only get into three wrestling matches and one race--for a time, his brother is only his own.

Then Yen Sid comes calling, and Oswald only hesitates twice before he goes.

Mickey kind of wants to smash the sorcerer's face in just on principle, but he puts worms in his shoes instead.

* * *

The sorcerer has a ripple effect on their sleepy little town: names are sliding onto everything now, slithering into every nook and cranny, and places go from "by the water" and "not by the water" to "dock" and "riverboat" and "hill"; places go from "house" to "my house," from "dog" to "Pluto," from "world" to "our world" and from "ours" to "mine."

The people are no longer called the people, and there have been motions to give a name to their own world, to distinguish it from others, since Yen Sid says each world must have its own name, of course, for all the travelers must know whence they come and where they go.

Oswald has decided he is a "rabbit."

Mickey isn't quite sure what a "rabbit" is, but he knows that he is not one, even if it's only because he would never have such a silly-looking tail.

But Mickey does know what a traveler is: it is someone who does not belong.

And Yen Sid is trying to turn his brother into one of them.

The duck with the funny cheek feathers says it's an "opportunity" and things become much more interesting once everyone realizes that traveling means that Oswald could bring them back all kinds of interesting snacks from other worlds.

In light of this news, Mickey decides you only count as a traveler when you're on a world that isn't your own.

* * *

Mickey is often restless now, where once he lazed through his days, but the tingle of Yen Sid's magic makes him want to sneeze whenever he gets too close, so he spends his days exploring, pushing against the boundaries of the world until it yields to him, allowing him to meet new strangers-who-are-not, different shapes and sizes but who still fundamentally belong _here_ in ways that he can't explain.

The ones he meets don't know the new words, not yet, and they speak through the language that he's learning is only native to the children of this world, laughter and the tilt of a smile, a quick gesture and an exaggerated pose, and it soothes him in a way that the endless days no longer can.

He wanders, and pushes against the edges of the world, and laughs and shoves against those boundaries, feels them strain and stretch and sometimes snap, shifting around him, and he climbs trees and makes streams and clambers across rocks and drops down into gulleys and lets the land feed him, lets the water nourish him, lets the ground be his pillow and the breeze his companion.

He pauses outside a grand house once, caught by the tinkling sound of laughter and the flutter of a ribbon on a clothesline, but he doesn't know what makes him stop, doesn't know what makes his skin tingle, so he shakes his head hard and continues on.

It is the first time he wonders if a feeling has a name.

It is also the first time he finds himself laughing without a reason to do so and examining all of the flowers he finds very closely, even though he's not quite sure why they've become so fascinating.

Then he watches Horace turn even clumsier every time Clarabelle walks by, and things suddenly start to make a lot of sense, which is a little strange since he hasn't even seen her yet.

But he knows that she's there and that she's the most wonderful girl in the world.

* * *

When Mickey drifts back into town after one of his journeys, he finds his brother there waiting. 

It's odd enough behavior that Mickey checks him for a fever even before a greeting, but Oswald shrugs his hands away and cuffs him upside the head, then pulls him down to the waterside, across the stones that crisscross the river, and out onto the far bank.

Mickey follows him out of sheer curiosity, beyond the docks, down the meandering dirt paths and out onto the fields. 

When all is quiet and still, Oswald reaches out a hand and presses it against Mickey's chest. Then he presses his other hand to the grass and goes still, nodding at Mickey with an ear cocked.

Mickey only hesitates for a moment before reaching out and doing the same, one hand against his brother's chest, one hand flat on the ground.

They stand like this in silence while the wind stirs the grasses and tugs at Oswald's fluffy tail, while the worlds whirl sparkling above them, while the clouds drift and tiny insects call to one another, and it's boring enough that Mickey's halfway towards dozing when he finally notices it, the rhythm beneath his hands, in his chest, in his brother's chest.

He jerks to his feet with a startled cry, but Oswald only just looks at him and nods once, grinning brightly.

It is never too hot or too cold in their world, but Mickey slinks next to his brother just the same, nestles up close like they're children again so he can hear his heart, and drums his fingers in the dirt to the beat that pounds in both their chests and in the earth below.

They stay that night in the fields like they used to, in the days-before, but Oswald keeps them both awake with chatter about what it might mean, about how he's still the oldest no matter what, but maybe Mickey isn't quite as young as he thought, and Yen Sid finds them surly and sleepy-eyed in the morning, and picks them both up to take them into town for breakfast.

They both refrain from telling him that if they'd simply gone looking, their world would have provided for them.

(Yen Sid is also cranky in the morning.)

* * *

Yen Sid calls it a "keyblade," smiles approvingly and says "What a lucky little rabbit," but Oswald holds it gingerly, and Mickey seems to be the only one who shares his trepidation, while all the others gather around his brother and marvel.

A sliver of a world's beating heart is not something to be held in one's hands, Mickey thinks, not when the world itself is still an infant, not when he can feel the lack aching in his own chest, a sharp bright thing that burns with every breath and clouds his vision with pain.

They're too _young_ for this, Mickey knows, and knows that he will never be able to explain, not to his brother, not now, not while Oswald is caught up in the radiance of a sorcerer's promise and the endless spill of power that sings in his hands.

And maybe it's strange when just one hurts so much, but maybe Mickey wants one of his own.

* * *

Yen Sid is taking Oswald away to train.

Yen Sid is _stealing_ his brother.

And yet a keybearer is a gift born of the worlds, so Oswald must go, and he must learn, and he must become strong enough to protect them all.

And in his absence, Mickey will become the eldest child of this world.

He kind of wonders what he's supposed to do with it.

* * *

When Yen Sid first appeared, no one had noticed as the walls surrounding the world shimmered and shifted to let him pass.

When he leaves, Mickey feels the world-walls ripple, and stumbles heavily, suddenly dizzy for reasons he's not quite sure he understands.

And when Oswald leaves a breath of an instant later, taking their world's keyblade with him, for just a moment, Mickey's vision goes black.

Once he blinks his way back to consciousness, he decides one keyblade is enough.

* * *


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which There Is a Childhood

In Oswald's absence, nothing changes. The names that have slid into the world continue to change, to breed, until there is a word twined around every creature, words humming in the air and rushing with the river, strung from the sun to smother the land below.

Mickey still wanders, still leans into the corners of the world, still follows wherever his feet point him, still shuns the new language, refusing to birth something new when the ground is not yet steady, when new paths spiral out from wherever he touches.

When his feet tread a circuit and bring him back to where he started, he will rest, and maybe then his chest will stop burning, maybe then the ache in his bones will cease.

It will be a very long time before he understands what "growing pains" are.

It will be longer still before he understands what that means.

* * *

There are shortcuts to be made in this world, swift and silent doors that spill open at a touch, and Mickey laughs with delight, darting between one and the next, fleet-footed and sly, each one a new extension of what has come before, each one strung out across the world like the stones across the river, and he spins around to smile behind him, to share his triumph, but he is alone.

That's okay, though, once Oswald comes back, though, he'll show him.

* * *

In Oswald's absence, Mickey learns what it is to count the days.

He spends a long string of them, maybe dozens, maybe hundreds, crafting out a tiny town for tiny people, using the curl of his body to scoop out the bay, the tip of his tail to detail each shingle and every leaf on every tree.

He isn't quite sure how to make tiny people, but that will be his next project, whenever he figures out how to do it.

After all, it'll be easier to concentrate once his chest stops burning.

* * *

Mickey moves on from the tiny town, sliding into a new space, stretching up on his toes just to see how far he can go, and leaping into the sky when he finds that it isn't enough.

Beneath his tracing hands, the land moves, shifting and shaping, clear air settling down into something heavy and solid, until he has made himself a house to stay in.

And then he wonders why he bothered, because the land will always shelter him, and he has no possessions to call his own.

_This is my house_ , he thinks, and then shrugs and walks out the front door.

It is a gift of the world, like everything else, and nothing more.

It's probably a bad sign that making something from nothing has begun to bore him.

* * *

Mickey passes by the grand house again, when the sun is high in the sky, and pauses in the knee-high grass.

There is a girl there, sitting on the porch swing, and her ears are like his. Her ears, and her nose, and the soft curl of her tail, and she wears a ribbon on her head like a flower crown.

For just a moment, the burning in his chest subsides.

For just a moment, all is calm.

He raises a hand in greeting, bounds over and introduces himself with a tumble and a laugh, but then there's a very big something on the porch and it's nowhere near as pretty as she is and is yelling at him besides, so Mickey turns around and runs.

When he chances a look behind him as he crests the hill, he catches a glimpse of her waving, and spends the rest of the day a giddy mess, trying to guess her name.

* * *

There is another girl, in a place less grand, plucking flowers and placing them in a basket. Her ears and tail are different than his own, and he does not spare her a glance until he has nearly passed her.

The only thing that slows his steps is the brief flare of heat in his chest, brighter than the usual pain, but it's a strange and unfamiliar thing, so after a moment's hesitation he continues on.

He'll remember this place, though, and this girl, because she's not _her_ , but she seems to be familiar.

* * *

Everything comes back to the river, Mickey thinks, and it always will. There is motion now, thick on the shores, people moving and changing and creating with their own hands, taking the gifts the world gives them and making them into something new, something that is all their own.

Mickey thinks of a girl on a porch swing, and the impatient way Oswald always tries to blow the drooping curl of his ears out of his face, and closes his eyes and surrenders.

And suddenly breathing is not so very difficult after all.

Maybe he has been a bit stubborn about all this.

* * *

He scoops up the flowers that bloom at his command and carries them across the field, to the grand house, to the home of the girl on the porch swing.

Her father, as it turns out, is both very tall and very unimpressed by his meager offering.

Mickey works the kinks out of his tail and wonders how it is possible that there is such a thing as a father when their world is still so new, when he knows only Oswald is his elder.

And then he presses a hand to his chest, closes his eyes, and listens as the world flows through him, and thinks _oh_.

Small wonder, then, that Yen Sid annoyed him. Small wonder that he doesn't care for the new languages borne by the people, small wonder that he can't help but wander, small wonder that he aches so much in the absence of his brother.

His people will grow quick and sure and light, will dance into adulthood and create children of their own, but Mickey will forever be bound to the pace of his world, and worlds grow much more slowly than people.

He hopes the girl on the porch swing will wait for him.

* * *

He stays on the fringes of the town now, watching his people change, watching them grow. All of them have names now, ones that describe the sweep and curve of tails and ears, feathers and fur, names that reflect the shape of their bodies instead of the shape of their souls.

Mickey finds himself approving a bit more of those who only use one instead of two names, even though their motives range from pride to gentleness, even though he knows that he shouldn't prize one more than the other, because the world doesn't, and in the absence of his brother it is from his world that he seeks all of his answers.

It is a sleepy, drowsy world, only now waking up to itself, and his answers are slow in coming, stretched out over long lazy days, and sometimes he finds himself waking out of a doze with no conception of how much time has passed.

That is as it should be, but the sun rises and sets, and Mickey cannot help the urge to count as the days slide past.

Yen Sid said the training would take years, but Mickey has no idea what a year even is, and isn't quite sure that he wants to know. From his world he gets the vague impression of spinning, and twirls in a field to see if he can understand what it means, but he only gets dizzy and tumbles into a flowerbed that hadn't been there a moment earlier.

Lying in a spill of pure white blossoms, he stares up at the sky and wonders for the first time what it must be like to be one of them, to breathe and think and be without the gentle drag of a world's will beneath their skin, to not be able to see the thin shell that shimmers beyond the stretch of the clouds, the armor their world has given to them all to shelter them from what lies beyond.

If he is to be bound to this world for always, perhaps it is time he got to know his people a bit better.

* * *

They don't know his name, and Mickey is delighted. They don't know his name and they don't know what he is, they think he's just another child, a little slow, a little simple, and he smiles widely and communicates only in his native tongue, never speaking a single word aloud.

They remember Oswald, but they only know Mickey as his younger sibling, and Mickey wonders if this too is a form of self-defense, sending one out to attract attention while drawing the other close and safe, a double-layer of protection for the world and its keepers.

It's a brilliant plan.

Mickey smiles a bit more widely as he steals the tools from the shed and begins to scatter them around the dock, making sure at least two of them see him--if his world is going to all this trouble to shelter him, he can only do his best to play along—for no one will ever suspect a troublemaker to be this world's keeper, no matter how special his elder sibling, no matter the way Yen Sid used to look at him in the rare moments when his eyes were not fixed on Oswald.

Deception, as it turns out, comes as naturally as breathing, as naturally as listening to the whispers of his world. 

In time, it will become his greatest weapon.

For now, it makes stealing sarsaparilla from the saloon very easy.

* * * 

He takes care to flit through his people's lives, taking a day's work here, skipping out there, and though he doesn't know names and doesn't want to, he is careful to sweep through with minor disasters, just enough to keep them on their toes, just enough to make himself a barely-tolerated presence but not enough to be a nuisance.

It's pretty fun to destroy things, but it's also fun to make them, and sometimes he makes things specifically to destroy them later--he hadn't lasted long making barrels simply because the urge to race them down hillsides became irresistible within the first day of doing so.

There are more of them than there used to be, although he's not quite sure how, since families seem rare, and he's seen several would-be romances crash and burn and then drag themselves back onto their feet, so maybe there are more children than there used to be, or maybe their world is still gently creating new children here and there, now that it's not so difficult, now that it's a joy and not a necessity.

When Mickey finds someone sleeping in the field of flowers he'd created with his tumble, fur still shimmering with the dusty remains of the magic that made him, he knows that it's true.

He's an adult, like so many of the early children were, at least in form, but unlike the ones that Mickey remembers, he wakes with laughter on his lips, stumbles to his feet, trips over them, and lands face-first in the flowers and then stays sprawled there, marveling at the scent and texture, sliding awkward fingers against the petals with a delicacy belied by his shape.

This one will only ever have one name, Mickey thinks, and slides off his perch in the trees, introduces himself with the sweep of his tail and brilliant smile, and the new arrival smiles back and returns the greeting in the native language of the land, an awkward flail of limbs and another warm spill of laughter, and he is gentle and kind and thoughtful and he will see right through Mickey, for now and for always.

He does not have the world singing beneath his skin, cannot feel its pulse in its chest, but Mickey is the second born and can sense the care that was poured into him, can sense what void he was meant to fill, and if Oswald is their world's warrior and Mickey its keeper, then this is the one meant to guard its people. 

He calls himself "Goofy," hides his grace beneath a clumsy exterior, and next to the girl on the porch swing, is the loveliest thing Mickey has ever seen.

* * *

The first storm is not Mickey's doing, though he spends it racing out in the fields, face turned to the sky, tracing out lightning strikes with outstretched fingers and laughing at the feeling of water in his ears, for whoever heard of water falling from the sky?

There is no anger in this storm, no threats pressing close, just the twist and crackle of energy sizzling through the soil and lancing the air, and he wonders if this is an experiment or just a prelude to something else.

Mickey thinks the feeling humming through him might be called anticipation, but he doesn't much care for naming feelings, even more than he dislikes naming people or things, for who could describe a feeling in something so arbitrary as a single word?

* * *

In the morning they find someone washed up on the riverbank, feathers sodden all the way through, and he is so thoroughly unimpressed by his rude awakening that he promptly gets in a fight that eventually expands to encompass fourteen different people.

Mickey lingers at the edge of the crowd and watches him fight, a brawler who doesn't have the build for it but does have the tenacity to bite hard and in uncomfortable places, and he may accidentally trip another bystander or two into the fray just to see what happens.

Violence is as common as laughter here, and melts into it just as quickly, so when the fight finally settles, half of the participants swagger off for a sarsaparilla and the other half decide to go fishing, regardless of their lack of lines, hooks, or bait. 

Mickey overhears the beginnings of an intense debate about the possibility of using hats as a net before he decides to hop down from the barrel he'd been perched on--to get a good view, as it is an unfortunate fact that all of his people seem to be much taller than he is--to inspect the last person standing.

He's grumbling to himself still, dusting off his hands and fluffing up his still-damp feathers when Mickey approaches and greets him in the traditional way, a flicked tail and a bright smile, an experiment to see what kind of gift he is, to see what special thing his world has now created.

The stranger responds with what the royal chronicler will later determine is the first-ever invective heard on the world.

* * * 

The clouds are full and heavy, and the air seems wet, somehow, so Mickey is on his feet and wandering, past the ramshackle houses that are beginning to turn into a town, across the river and through the fields, beyond the grand houses, where the only thing separating the land from the sky is the brilliant shell that bounds this world from all others.

It's difficult to see even when the sky is clear, but when the cloud cover is so thick, Mickey has to squint to even catch the faintest glimpse of it, so he doesn't see it when it ripples with impact, but that doesn't matter when he can feel it down to his bones.

He topples over into the grass, but doesn't mind it, not when there's coolness settling into his chest, not when his world is humming through him, not when the air finally tastes right again.

And then Mickey flings himself onto his feet and into a dead run, because there's a brilliant flash of light in the distance, and finally, finally, his brother is home.

* * *


	4. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which There Are Conversations Sans Words

* * *

When Mickey finds him, Oswald is standing at the top of the ridge, staring down at the town below, and he skids to a stop at the bottom of the hill instead of racing up it and tackling him, when before he would have flung himself forward, leaping up the length of the slope in two long bounds, when before he would have scrambled up and jumped out of the nearest tree to surprise him.

Now is not then, Mickey realizes, disquieted, and wades through the waist-high grass to reach his brother's side.

He looks different, somehow, in some way that Mickey can't define, fizzling faintly with magic that's not his own, and he's a little bit hard to look at the same way Yen Sid is. 

When Oswald finally tears his gaze away from the town to look at Mickey, there's something unfamiliar in his eyes, something stranger than his appearance and the taste of the magic in the air, and Mickey breathes in sharply and forces himself to stay still, because this is his _brother_ , this is the eldest child of their world, and he is _not_ a stranger.

And then Oswald shrugs and smiles, and Mickey smiles back, a little more fiercely than he should, lashes his tail just a bit too hard, and Oswald finally laughs and greets him in return, the way he should have the instant Mickey came running.

Then Oswald takes a step forward and hits the ground with a yelp, and Mickey realizes why he had stayed still.

Inter-world travel is apparently more complicated--and dizzying--than he thought.

* * *

Oswald's eyes are strange, and his clothes are strange, but he hasn't forgotten how to speak with the crinkle of his nose and the fall of his ears, with the hand he presses against his own chest, then Mickey's, and Mickey catches his hand and reciprocates, tilting his head and curling his tail, and between the two of them they manage to puzzle out what one says after having been parted for a long time, but they're careful not to give it a name, since there's no reason for it.

They are the firstborn of their world, created to defend and to shelter it, and they will make sure that none of the other children will ever have to experience this feeling.

* * *

An idle thought later and the grass is softer than it should be when they sit, but Oswald doesn't seem to notice, eyes drawn again to the soft glow of the light below, and Mickey hides a frown before deciding that he's probably just surprised by the ways in which things have changed.

The little town glows softly in the night, but it's a warm sort of glow, and it doesn't interfere with any of the stars, and once the saloon closes, it will grow still and drowsy in the full dark, with only the stars above them gleaming.

Mickey guesses that if you're not used to it, the gentle press of the light against the darkness can be a strange sight, since one so typically eats the other instead of the two embracing like this; but he likes the way it looks now. 

When he looks over at Oswald, he can't read the expression on his brother's face, and even though there's quiet contentment humming in his chest and beneath his fingertips, even though he can _feel_ it resonating through his brother, that isn't really a reply.

It's like their world is pouring itself into him and finding only a void within, but that doesn't make sense, because Mickey can sense the power there, carefully tucked behind his skin, and--

\--oh.

It seems that people aren't the only ones who feel that feeling that they will not name.

* * *

When the soft glow of the town below dims, Oswald lets out a sigh and flops back into the grass, finally relaxing. Mickey yawns his way out of drowsiness and rolls over when Oswald gives an inquisitive chirp against his ear, and blinks a few times as he comes nose-to-nose with his brother.

His eyes are still strange, but he looks much healthier like this, bathed in starlight and gently humming with the pulse of their world, and when Mickey reaches out, Oswald meets him, fingertips touching and curling together.

Their world has made them for itself, and no matter how far they may wander or how much their world may change, they will always belong to it and to each other. 

* * *

They rise with the sun, shaking off the morning dew and stretching and yawning lazily, and Mickey smiles at his brother, at the glossy sheen of his fur and the brightness in his eyes, at the thick hum of magic in the air, and the gentle murmur of their world beneath their feet.

Oswald seems much happier now, humming softly under his breath and perking his ears up inquisitively when Mickey makes a soft sound and inclines his head towards the nearest tree. 

Its flowers unfurl as they approach, and as they come to a stop beneath it, the branches lean down and drop sweet, heavy fruit into Mickey's waiting hands. Oswald makes a soft, sharp noise, taking a quick step back; but when Mickey turns back to him, he's smiling, and when Mickey offers him the pear, he takes it.

Later, they plant the seeds, and Oswald takes a step back and watches carefully as Mickey coaxes them into sprouting, and when he's done, Oswald reaches out a hand and settles it against his chest with a soft, strange smile.

And then he headbutts Mickey with a laugh, and Mickey understands.

* * *

They wander through the fields, first, so Oswald can feel out the new boundaries of their world, so that their world can whisper to them and not be drowned out by its people.

Oswald murmurs approvingly at the shimmering shield that arches so far above them, at the river and the tall grass and the grand houses, and comes to a complete stop to watch the girl with the strange ears pick flowers.

Mickey grins to himself and backs off as Oswald takes a hesitant step forward before biting his lip and glancing backwards, then gesturing to the ground in an awkward little motion that makes Mickey's grin stretch even more widely.

He is careful to make it a very lush flower, with wide soft petals and a scent like sweetness, and a stem that's soft to the touch.

Oswald picks it up very carefully and edges his way closer to the girl in a motion that starts out halting but melts into a confident strut as the girl raises her head and flashes him a smile.

Mickey watches their interaction, all fluttering lashes and coy smiles, and creates a flower of his own before turning around and heading back towards the grand house and the girl with the ribbon that lives inside it.

* * *

Mickey makes his way back to Oswald a bit later, rubbing his sore back and grumbling softly under his breath, only to discover his brother engaged in the same activity, plopped on the ground in a warm patch of sunlight, scowling and picking brambles out of the fluff of his tail.

When he spies Mickey, Oswald hops to his feet and begins chattering angrily about how inhospitable the girl's family is, and the ludicrous size of the girl's house, and then he starts rambling about the size of the girl's family.

Specifically, the size of her guardian.

Mickey frowns a bit, thinking about his own altercations with the ribbon girl's father, and, considering, stretches up on his tiptoes and down again, lashing his tail, and Oswald shakes his head in reply.

They are the eldest, and they must protect their people, even when their people are so much larger than they themselves are--as firstborn they are swift and delicate, and so have no excess, only a thin veneer of skin to hold the power beneath, to shape and give it form--and it's best for all that even their people are deceived by their shape, even though sorcerers can apparently see right through it.

Mickey knows why their world has made them this way, but even so, he wishes it weren't quite so easy for their people (or rather, certain fathers) to lift them up and throw them off of porches and across lawns and, apparently, into bramble bushes.

\--bramble bushes which aren't there any longer, and Mickey turns and gives his brother a puzzled look, because there's something not-there when it should be there, and there's an odd tingle in the air around that spot where something isn't, and it makes his fur fluff and his fingers curl, makes him shift his weight from side to side and glance around, because something has stirred here, and something is wrong.

Oswald clasps his hands behind his back and turns his gaze down and to the side, and Mickey's eyes narrow. He takes a step forward, tail curling behind him, and Oswald glances up and winces, then shifts his weight and takes a few steps back. He chirrups softly, flicking his ears down, and Mickey stares at him, at this creature who is suddenly and again a stranger.

He will not and would never lift a hand against their people, but Oswald has destroyed a piece of their world, and Mickey frowns as he deliberately pushes his brother away and tries to coax the little plants to grow again, tries to pull the power out of the ground and form it into life, but the dirt stays dead beneath his fingertips, washed-out and sterile, and now Mickey doesn't know what to think at all.

Yen Sid has made his brother a destroyer.

Destruction must come before rebirth, he knows, he has always known, but here, crouched low over the scorched ground, Mickey wonders for the first time if Oswald is really safe out wandering the worlds on his own.

* * *

They walk again--start running, really--when the one who threw Oswald out comes to shout at them, but no one in this world is as swift and light on their feet as they are, and they both know it.

When Mickey starts to slow, Oswald bumps him in the shoulder and then reaches over to tweak his nose, and Mickey takes a swat at his ears, and then they're tumbling in a race that's half-wrestling and half-play, and it's obvious that Oswald is trying to distract him, and Mickey wonders if he should let him.

They are not the same as they were when their world first made them, but they can clearly live on their own, and perhaps Oswald will find companions to travel with him once Yen Sid no longer guides him. 

If Oswald won't choose companions of his own, Mickey decides, he'll just have to find some for his brother.

The girl with the funny ears would be perfect.

* * *

They scramble into town in a cloud of road dust, and it's easy enough for Mickey to smile and drag his brother to the saloon, easy enough to snatch a sarsaparilla from an unsuspecting bull, and Mickey makes sure to smack Oswald's hands down before he can attempt to pay for anything.

His brother is laughing when Mickey gently drags him out from underneath the ensuing fight, and when he fishes a stolen sandwich out of his pants and offers to share it, Mickey feels his own laugh bubbling in his chest.

It's a little awkward, but here is his brother, trying to learn what their world and their people have made, and perhaps it is Mickey's time to do the same. Oswald is the warrior and he is the keeper, and that is the way it must be, so Mickey will listen to him and learn, instead of just showing off what he has done. Even though what he’s done is amazing.

Much more amazing than anything Oswald’s done, he’s sure.

* * *

Most of them don't remember Oswald's name at first.

His brother doesn't seem to like it.

Mickey does.

Once he explains why, Oswald looks thoughtful, but keeps up the grumbling as they pull away from the crowds.

And that's when they get ambushed by Scrooge.

* * * 

As the sun begins to sink in the sky, Mickey snaps out of his stupor and reaches for his brother's hand and forcibly drags him away from Scrooge's endless interrogation about the other worlds that Oswald has seen.

Mickey fell asleep halfway through, so he's not quite sure what just happened, but judging by the look on Oswald's face, Oswald isn't either.

They're both a little off-balance, so Mickey leads his brother away from the town again, to the place where he made his empty house and his tiny, empty town, and Oswald sits in the shallow bay and drags his fingers through the water.

Mickey trails his tail in the sand, a habit too well-ingrained to break, and it is quiet as the sun kisses the horizon, the red-gold light making the world-wall so high above flare like a sheet of flame.

It is very quiet when Oswald shows him the keyblade.

It is quieter when Mickey holds it in his hands.

And there is nothing but silence and the heartbeat of the world as they hold it still between them.

It feels like a promise.

* * *

In the full dark, Oswald rises to his feet, gently dragging Mickey up with him, and tugs him down to the riverside. Their world is singing softly, and Mickey doesn't resist as Oswald drags him upriver, past the town and the houses, into the land where only the wild things grow.

The river here is wide and shallow, skin-warm and clear through all the way to the bottom, and Oswald steps straight into it. 

Mickey follows him. Mickey will always follow him, sometimes against his own better judgment, because Oswald might be the oldest but Mickey is pretty sure that he's the smart one.

They clamber over boulders and past unintelligent life as the river wanders through fields and thick forests, and when the trees nearly blot out the light from the worlds above, they slow. When the river comes to an end, they step into the headwaters, a wide, softly-rippling pool, and when they reach the center, they stop.

The water laps at Mickey's waistline, warms his hands, and the current slicks back his fur and tugs his tail out to stream behind him, and at his side, Oswald sighs, deep and clear. When Mickey turns to glance at him, Oswald's eyes are closed, his head tilted back, his ears flopped over to drag against the water, his palms open and floating in front of him, and he's listening to the heart of their world, here where it's so loud that anyone who really wanted to listen would be able to hear.

He almost looks asleep, and Mickey's half-tempted to poke him, but then he takes a second look around and blinks in confusion, because this place seems familiar.

Seems incredibly familiar, like something from his earliest, dimmest memories, from the soft burble of the spring that bubbles up from the earth to spill into the pool that will become the headwaters of the river, the soft mossy grasses that line the water's edge, to the boulders and the fallen logs, their solitary playground in the earliest of days when they were their world's only children.

This is where they were born.

* * *

The memories are vague and uncertain and grow even blurrier as Mickey tries to think back, remembering a time suffused with warmth and softness, shadow and light, the water on his skin and the world's heartbeat singing through him, and, always, the gentle sound of someone breathing beside him.

His first clear memory is of his brother.

He'd chewed on his ears.

They'd had their first fight when Oswald attempted to chew back.

* * *

He blinks his way out of contemplation as the water ripples, as the warmth at his side begins to drift away, and without thinking he reaches out a hand and catches Oswald's wrist.

His brother turns to look at him, one ear lifting, and Mickey shakes his head lightly, still half-caught in memory, and gives a gentle tug.

Oswald blinks at him for a moment, then pulls back, a little harder than Mickey had, so Mickey tugs again, much harder this time, and then Oswald sets his feet into the sand and pulls back hard enough that Mickey loses his balance and splashes face-first into the water.

That's okay.

It's much easier to go for his brother's ankles that way.

* * *

They drag themselves out onto the bank, breathless with laughter and drenched all the way through the fur and down to the skin, and Mickey shakes his head hard to get the water out of his ears while Oswald shakes his feet off, then wipes them on the moss and flops down at Mickey's side.

It's been a while since he's been so thoroughly soaked, and it's been a while since he's laughed that hard. Mickey thinks it's probably been even longer for Oswald, and turns to glance at him, then smothers another laugh as he takes in the sight of his fur, waterlogged but already starting to spike up in the places where it's been ruffled.

Oswald snorts back at him, reaches a hand out and swipes it against Mickey's arm, smoothing down the fur, and Mickey tilts his head to the side and leans over, reaching out to slide a hand down the sodden length of an ear, flicking away any remaining water out into the moss.

He remembers this, the soft drowsy times after their play, falling together in a heap on the bank and picking leaves out of his brother's ever-mussed tail, Oswald's gentle chuckle against his ear and his hands smoothing down his ruffled fur, yawning against his brother's chest and falling asleep here, so many times before that they've all blurred together now.

They are not now who they were then--a little differently shaped, a little larger, a little stronger and a little more aware--but Mickey closes his eyes, and when he does that, he can pretend that it is like before, when all was the world and his brother and the endless sky above.

But it's not the same, and it never will be again.

And it's kind of hard to keep pretending once Oswald starts to snore, since he never used to do _that_ before.

* * *

The dawn reaches them slowly, filtering through the trees, so it takes a while for them to rise, uncurling themselves from the knot that they'd slept in. Mickey rolls over--but not away--and idly demands strawberries; and Oswald gives a brief snort as a little plant sprouts, buds, and produces fruit, curling out towards Mickey's outstretched hand.

They eat in drowsy silence, listening to the world around them wake, and when they're done Mickey places the leftover leaves in a pile and presses them back into the ground. Oswald gives a soft chirp, sliding a hand over the newly-enriched earth, and lifts an ear.

Mickey frowns thoughtfully, then reaches out to rearrange his brother's hands before nodding slightly.

Oswald closes his eyes, and there's a soft hum of power in the air, a gentle overlay to the pulse of their world beneath and inside them. Time passes in silence, but the dirt stays dirt, and no new things sprout from the old.

Oswald stays still like that as the sun slides further into the sky, as the shadows of the trees dip and move, and when the sun hangs high, his ears and shoulders droop, and he pulls his hands back with a sigh and then a shrug.

Mickey will not use the word for this feeling either, because it is too horrible to name, so he grins and teases his brother instead, because that is much better.

* * *

When Oswald walks into the pool, gently treading a circle around the full length of it, Mickey follows with his eyes, content to float on his back in the center, a little sleepy in the haze of the afternoon's sunlight, which pours down only in the middle of the pool, and cannot touch its outer edges.

When Oswald makes a soft, pleased sound, and promptly dives underneath the water, Mickey splashes to his feet, trying to get a better look at whatever caught his brother's attention.

Oswald grabs his ankle and pulls him down, but not in a way that seems to indicate that he wants to play, so when his brother tugs him forward, Mickey perks his ears up and follows.

He hadn't noticed this depth before, in the darkest corner of the pool, and the water is clear enough that he can see the tumble of boulders and the clear open space between them.

When Oswald swims through it, Mickey follows, idly wondering where they're going, idly wondering why his head feels so light. He's pretty sure it's not a lack of air because apparently they can breathe the water here, and somehow that isn't quite as surprising as he thinks it probably should be.

The tunnel is long, the rocks warm and smooth to the touch, and Oswald seems to know where he's going, so Mickey doesn't mind the twists and turns, doesn't mind the increasing pressure as the tunnel slopes steadily downwards, as the light fades and he loses sight of his brother.

Sight is only a single sense.

They surface in a cavern lit by what seems like a thousand stars, hanging low over the water, but when Mickey reaches up to touch them, he stops before actually hitting the stone, suddenly aware of the fragile life clinging to the craggy surface, so delicate that even his maker's hands could crush it. 

He turns to his brother, sudden and swift, and exhales softly at the sight, Oswald's hands tucked gently beneath the water, his ears tilted back and his head tilted up, staring at the world-swirls above them.

He looks a little silly.

Mickey paddles over to him, a soft smile curling his lips, and noses his side in a way that he hasn't since they were very small, still soft with down and unable to take two steps without stumbling; and hums softly underneath his breath when Oswald turns and nuzzles back.

Then Oswald lifts an ear, not too far, careful not to bump the dangling lights, and chirps, a grin tugging at his lips. Mickey turns his head to look behind him and makes a soft sound that he is certain isn't a squeak even though it makes Oswald start laughing.

Above the path he tread, the little light-lives glow even brighter than all the others in the cavern, a river of thicker starlight in all the gleaming, and Mickey turns back to his brother and sticks out his tongue with a smile.

Oswald promptly makes a face in return, wiggling his fingers, so Mickey makes a more elaborate one and follows it with a splash. 

When the ensuing wrestling match is over, they continue their swim beneath the shimmering light, and have to duck a little sometimes to avoid scraping their ears against the ceiling. In time they come to a cavern that arches up high while the little lives hang down in glistening ropes, and Oswald grabs and tugs at his hand insistently as he gestures forward, to a strangely blank sheet of rock on the far side of the cavern.

And then Mickey blinks, and it's not blank at all, it's blazingly bright, and his world's heartbeat is a dull roar behind it, inside this place, and he wonders how he didn't notice before. It's _loud_.

Oswald tugs him forward again, and together they press their free hands against the stone.

Mickey closes his eyes against the blaze of darkness and light, tightens his grip on his brother's hand, and knows he is home.

* * * 

They are the eldest because it took so much to birth them, but they are stronger now, more stable, they can stand on their own and walk among the worlds and not be swept away.

Here is where the severed pieces of their world's heart were left, here is where the shadows coalesced to form flesh and bone around them, and here is where the thousand tiny lives slid down from their false sky to give them breath and blood.

They were perfect, then, but too fragile to do anything fun or useful, and Mickey thinks he likes it better now, when they are no longer one child, and their hearts are not the same.

He also kind of likes having hands that are all his own.

* * *

They make their way back from the cavern slowly, a little awkwardly, because Mickey feels like his weight's been shifted, or that a piece of him has changed somehow, and from the sluggish way that Oswald's moving the same seems to be true of him.

The darkness of the tunnel hugs close around them like an embrace, and they surface again in the full of the night, but the worlds that sparkle above them are a pale imitation of what lies below. 

That must be true of all of them.

Mickey curls his tail up, tilting his head in question, and Oswald grins and nods, stretching a hand up to point at the world that he's been training on.

Someday, Mickey will see those worlds as well.

* * * 

Yen Sid comes in the morning to take his brother away, but neither of them flinch as the world-walls shift aside, and neither of them flinch when their hands finally part.

When Oswald leaves, it doesn't burn at all, it just aches, and even that doesn't hurt that much.

Mickey hopes he brings back even more loveliness the next time.

* * *


	5. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which a World Grows

* * *

There's someone new in town, someone who seems like a stranger but who isn't. Mickey can feel a rippling under his fur, a tingle in his fingertips, and he can't tell where the not-stranger came from. He doesn't-- _feel_ \--like someone river-born, but he's not a traveler. He doesn't seem new, and that thought makes Mickey frown, makes him trail along in his (sizable) wake, quick and silent (the not-a-stranger is large and _loud_ ) and trying to puzzle him out.

He's got a temper like all of their world's children, and the roaring laughter too, but he seems a bit slow-witted, not like someone who feels so familiar should be.

He's a mystery, and Mickey has decided that he likes those things.

* * *

He sees the girl with the ribbon in the street one day and can scarcely believe his good fortune. Her ribbon makes her ears look pretty, and he likes the way her bloomers peek out from underneath her skirt, and her smile is as bright as the sun, and he accidentally walks into the path of an oncoming cart while he's staring.

She giggles and claps her hands together as he vaults over it, bounces off the owner's head, and lands with a flourish on the rooftop of the saloon.

Mickey blows her a kiss and she doesn't turn away, she laughs and stretches out a hand to catch it.

She gives him a wink and tucks it in her skirt before turning away and flouncing into the crowd, and Mickey gives a giddy little laugh and flops onto his back to grin up at the sky.

Everything is _amazing_.

* * *

Their town is swelling softly, by degrees, once-scattered settlements giving way to more organization, more steady trade.

Mickey goes for a walk around the edges of the world. The other places--his people have been wandering--are growing too, shifting and changing to suit their children.

It's a different kind of creation, not like his own magic, wrought with physical labor instead of the gifts of the world, and Mickey sits back and watches how it's done.

It seems like an awful lot of bother.

* * *

He finds his path always returning to the town on the riverside, and part of him wonders why, what has drawn all of their world's most interesting children to that place.

It will be quite some time before he realizes that his heart is capable of resonating with those of beings who aren't Oswald.

It will be later still before he realizes that his people were simply being called to the place that will one day be the heart of their home.

* * *

His people grow ever-more industrious as the days pass. They slice down the trees to build things and draw shiny rocks from the ground to barter with; they mix earth and water to make bricks; and Mickey sits and watches and isn't sure what to feel.

They are his people and this is his land, and he is now and forever bound to both.

Eventually he starts to coax the trees into growing again and purify the water, but he doesn't replace the shiny metal or the missing earth--he mustn't solve all of his people's problems for them, and besides, the most wonderful brawls always start with either a romantic problem or those bits of shiny rock.

Or both.

* * *

One of the women in town collects flowers. She puts them in bunches and wraps them in ribbons and does a tidy business selling them to whoever gets roped in by her smile.

Goofy has often been seen in her company as of late, and Mickey takes an interest simply because of what Goofy is. The girl, for her part, is utterly unremarkable, and for some reason that is utterly perfect.

And most importantly of all, she gets her flowers from the girl who picks them in the fields.

* * *

The river is the life of the town, of the other towns, of the world, and if something does not come from the river and does not come from the worlds outside, where has it come from?

The not-stranger has settled in like all of their world’s children eventually do—Oswald alone, Mickey thinks, knows what it is to truly be free—and, as with all of the others, it is as if he has always been here.

But he hasn’t, because that isn’t possible.

He looks like any of the others, acts like any of the others, but he simply can’t be, and when Mickey asks, the world does not answer him.

That in itself is a mysterious thing.

Mickey sets himself in the path of the big creature and laughs when he skids and tumbles, laughs when he shouts and curses, reaches over and tweaks his pointed ear and then lightly vaults over the top of his head to steal the lunch from the pail he’d left on the edge of the dock.

It is as familiar as breathing, and yet it is not, and Mickey frowns as he bites into the sandwich.

\--the sandwich is _disgusting_.

And so the stranger can’t be what he thought, because that is impossible and the sandwich is proof.

* * *

Every day, there are new faces in town, a little differently shaped than they used to be, and Mickey perches on top of the saloon and watches his people. The new ones are a little strange, a little sharper than they should be, than their elders have been, and they splash in through the water and tumble down the hills and sing laughter in the air, and there is a girl who wears the shiny rocks in her hair, who dances at the saloon and makes so many of the men in town be so very silly that they swoon in her wake, except for the saloon’s owner, who scowls and turns away.

Mickey watches her flounce away from him, her head held high, watches him making sure not to watch her go, and quietly admires their resolve even when he finds himself puzzled by it, by the purposeful choice to suffer that kind of pain.

His people are bright, fierce things, and they shimmer and shine in every shade of silver and gray, in bright light and velvet darkness, and it makes him smile to watch them clash, it makes him smile to watch them fall and pick themselves back up again, to attack and defend and be foolish and wise and always, always brilliant.

His people are not meant to be shaped by anyone but themselves, and Mickey frowns as he thinks back on Yen Sid once again.

Oswald must protect the World, this much is true, and there are many shining worlds out there to explore, but all the same, every world’s children should _always_ be free.

* * * 

His people are restless, impatient, quick to laugh and to fight and to make, and he watches as they swing off the ropes at the watering hole, watches as they dig their fingers into the earth and pull forth their baubles, watches as they experiment and sing and hang washing out to dry, and for the first time Mickey wonders if he is supposed to be helping them make things instead of just making sure that the land keeps breathing.

It doesn't _seem_ right, but...

Oswald would know. He'll have to ask whenever he next comes home.

* * *

In retrospect, making a flower that large and sentient for the girl with the ribbon was _probably_ a bad idea.

And it only rampaged a little.

And it stopped being on fire after a while.

Mickey discreetly sidles backwards past the smoking wreckage and makes a mental note to never, ever let Oswald know about this. He would laugh for _weeks_.

* * *

He goes back to his tiny city by his tiny sea, and molds a tiny form of sand and breathes it into still, perfect glass.

He thinks of dreams, and dust, and fragile things, and does not coax it to life.

Some things even he cannot create.

* * *

Her tail curves a greeting in the air, but she continues down the street, head high and eyes fixed on the path before her. 

He follows her along the rooftops as the sun slowly slides down the sky, and she does not turn to look at him, but her laughter is warm on the breeze, and a scent of flowers lingers in the air.

It's a much gentler dance than the one that weekly damages the saloon, but Mickey is beginning to understand the appeal.

And watching the pretty dancer and Scrooge interact is very, very funny, as long as you remember to get out of the way in time. And to duck.

His people have begun using that word for Scrooge, a second name to go with his first.

Mickey can't decide if they do so out of respect or terror.

* * *

The not-stranger has built himself a little barge to take things up and down the river, so that the people can build, and it is fun to rearrange his cargo, to tug at his ears, and though the not-stranger shouts and complains, blusters and threatens, he laughs too, and chases when he should and doesn't when he shouldn't.

Mickey has decided that he likes him enough to learn his name, and it only takes six times tripping him before he knows.

He likes the name--it's short and direct and rough, like it should be, not like Donald, whose name is fancier than he is, though that might be because he's related to Scrooge, who is equally fancy and equally rough in turn, and who has also known to hurl out the not-stranger-- _Pete_ , Mickey thinks, his name is Pete and he has chosen it well--bodily out of the saloon despite his much-smaller size.

And not always through the doorway, either.

Unfortunately for the town gossip, everyone who was there at the time _still_ refuses to discuss the grand piano incident.

* * *

Slowly, piece by piece, his people's homesteads instead grow into neighborhoods, and slowly, piece by piece, their little village grows enough that it gets a new name, a sharper word for a sharper people. The saloon burns down and is rebuilt, Scrooge and his dancer love and fight worse than ever, and the docks and houses grow larger, more elaborate, stores and farms and gardens, roads and pathways and wells, a walkway along the river and a space to gather in the soft, rolling hills above the river.

Perched high in the hills, Mickey smiles, and looks to the sky as it shimmers, as it whispers to him that change has come.

His brother has returned.

* * *


End file.
